Northeast Dubois reaches first state baseball championship game

Northeast Dubois baseball reached Victory Field for the first time in school history and left Indianapolis with a 2-0 loss to Kouts in the Class 1A state championship game. The Jeeps entered the Friday night matchup as the No. 4 team in the bracket, while Kouts came in at No. 1 with a 31-1 record.

For Dubois County, the run gave Northeast Dubois a rare statewide spotlight and turned a baseball season into a community moment that stretched beyond the school grounds. The Indiana High School Athletic Association listed four programs in the Class 1A field as first-time state championship participants, and Northeast Dubois was one of them. Head coach Luke Woolems, in his ninth year at the school and 14th year overall, had guided a team that kept building toward a stage the program had never reached before.

Players described how the idea of a state title game had gone from a joking possibility when they were younger to a realistic expectation after earlier semi-state runs. Sophomore pitcher Eli Schroering summed up that balance of pressure and focus: "It’s just baseball, but we do want it really bad,". Woolems also pointed to the burden on Kouts, which had been back to the title game after finishing as the 2025 Class 1A runner-up.

The championship game stayed scoreless until the bottom of the second inning, when Kouts broke through for its first run. The Mustangs added an unearned run in the third and held the Jeeps down the rest of the way behind Billy Miller’s complete-game shutout. Kouts coach Jason Dorshorst, in his third year at the school and 11th overall, said there was pressure after nearly every player from last year’s runner-up team returned.

Northeast Dubois finished its season 23-6 after the loss, closing a run that carried the program farther than it had ever gone. The Jeeps did not win the state championship, but they took Dubois County to Victory Field for a title shot no previous Northeast Dubois baseball team had earned.